Glossary

 

Bilateral Stimulation (BLS): Stimulation (e.g eye movements, auditory, or tappers) to activate both left and right brain hemispheres of the brain. This stimulation helps unstuck the brain to release emotions. 

 

Dissociation: Dissociation is a mental process where a person disconnects from their thoughts, feelings, memories or sense of identity. It is a very normal and common way that our brain protects us from pain.  

 

Desensitization: Stage 4 of EMDR, where the bilateral stimulation is used to bring the emotion, sensations, thoughts, and negative core belief down from distressing to neutral. 

 

Developmental Trauma: 

Early childhood trauma generally refers to the traumatic experiences that occur to children aged 0-6. Because infants’ and young children’s reactions may be different from older children’s, and because they may not be able to verbalize their reactions to threatening or dangerous events, many people assume that young age protects children from the impact of traumatic experiences.

 

EMDR: Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing 

 

EMDR- unrestricted processing: EMDR processing where clients will start with touchstone memory and allow their brain to freely associate to other memories that feel similar. It is common in these processes that your brain will remember memories that are not on the treatment plan, that is normal. 

 

EMDR- restricted processing: EMDR restricted process is where the therapist and client decide to clear out one memory without allowing associations to other memories or events to be processed. This is a helpful tool for people who have recently experienced a recent traumatic event. 

 

Negative Core Belief: A strongly held core belief schema developed during EMDR treatment mapping that resonates with client’s presenting complaint or their “life script” (ex: I’m not good enough, I am unlovable, i’m unsafe). 

 

Nervous System: The human nervous system coordinates its actions and sensory information by transmitting signals to and from different parts of its body. The nervous system detects environmental changes that impact the body, then works in tandem with the endocrine system to respond to such events. In the body this is how we track memories through the sensations that come up in your nervous system. 

 

Positive Core Belief: A held positive belief schema developed during EMDR’s treatment mapping and resonates with the client’s desired belief to their presenting complaint  (ex: I’m safe, I am worthy, I am loved regardless). 

 

Touchstone Memory: The earliest identified memory that resonates with a client’s presenting complaint (emotions, sensations, or negative core belief). Usually we find these memories in the 0-6 age range depending on what treatment plan is being formed. 

 

Trauma (wound): Something that happened that you were not emotionally, physically or spiritually prepared for; something that is too much too soon, too much for too long, or too little for too long. Traumas can be events that put our system into fight-or-flight (near death experiences, abuse, etc) as well as a lack of a protective experience (neglect, missing safety). 

 

Note: two people can experience a traumatic event, but that doesn’t automatically mean they will both have a trauma response. Individual/genetic differences as well as our mental health, social supports, etc may influence if the event stays activated in our nervous system as a threat or if we heal from it naturally and move on. So it doesn’t matter how big or how small it is, you may have traumatic stress if it was “too much” for your nervous system at the time. And you also may have experienced intense events that don’t have trauma symptoms attached, and therefore don’t need treatment.  

 

Complex Trauma: Imagine a small snow ball that rolls down a hill and gains more snow and continues to get bigger and bigger. This is what complex trauma can look like. It can be a lot of the same trauma happening over and over again, or a web of different traumas throughout our lives. Traumatic events that are ongoing through an extended period of time can have lasting effects on our nervous systems and how we respond with the world. Treating complex trauma requires some different treatment considerations and strategies than a single-incident trauma, including longer treatment times. We may have to take time to learn or develop regulation skills that we were prevented from developing earlier in our lives. 

 

Resource/Resourcing: Resourcing refers to identifying and instilling coping skills or memories associated with your positive belief to help offer your system some support while processing memories. 

 

Reprocessing: Another word for stage 4 (Desentization) of the EMDR protocol where we start to work on the trauma memories with bilateral stimulation. 

 

Subject Units of Distress Scare (SUD): A 0-10 scale used to measure levels of disturbance within a memory that is found in their body. 0 is a neutral or no disturbance, and 10 is the highest level of disturbance imaginable. Used to scale memories that will be used to desensitize.  

 

Single Incident Trauma: When we have a single or specific traumatic event in our life, whether recent or past. Treatment for a single incident means reprocessing the event from start to finish so that it’s no longer stored as a trauma memory. 

 

Validity of Cognition (VOC): The measurement used for positive beliefs scaling from 1-7, 1 feels totally false and 7 feels completely true. 

 

Window of Tolerance (Polyvagal Theory) : Watch this link :https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1ovJu2GNVo